Recent Reading

Dear “Recent Reading” readers:

If I say Sayonara today it does not exactly mean goodbye…. I have so enjoyed the project I set myself over the past two years — of listing every book I’ve read and commenting on as many as possible. And I’ve learned so much. Principally, I’ve gained enormous respect for those who review books professionally. It turned out to be much harder than I thought it was going to be — for me — not just to gobble up one book after another, but actually to stop and think about each one deeply and then put those thoughts into written words. But it has been exciting and enlivening to engage in conversations with those of you who’ve written via my “contact” link, and to hear your views. So it’s with reluctance, now, that I’m down-sizing this project for a while. I will continue, month by month, to list the books I’ve read — and I would love to hear from any of you who have read them too, and, if you are interested, engage in an e-mail back-and forth. But because of new and pressing deadlines I am going to leave off writing my own little reviews on this page — at least for the rest of 2014.

So meanwhile, as promised, here are the books I’ve read over January and most of February. (Ignoring The Luminaries; you’ll find my contentious thoughts on that remarkable novel via the small menus at the top of this page.)